The Phone Call Ed Koch Remembers

Koch was “heartbroken,” he says, and even suffered a minor stroke, after it transpired in the middle of his third term that several of his close political allies were involved in graft, extortion and bribery. His friend, Queens Borough President Donald Manes, was implicated and pursued by Giuliani, then the U.S. attorney, and ended up committing suicide in a particularly grisly fashion, plunging a kitchen knife into his own heart.

“It put me into a state of depression,” Koch tells me. “I came out of it when John Cardinal O’Connor called me. We were very good friends. He said, ‘Ed, I know you’re depressed. You don’t have to be. Everybody knows you’re an honest man.’ I said, ‘Your Eminence, you don’t how much this means to me.’ And he said, ‘Oh no, it’s nothing.’ And I said, ‘No, Your Eminence, the Lubavitcher Rebbe didn’t call me, you called me, and I’m very grateful.’ From that point on, I got better.”

Two years, after the Al Smith dinner in New York — so after 10 P.M., after a long dinner event with lots of people who wanted time with him — I watched as Ed Koch (if he’s 88 now, he was 86 then) stood in a cab line outside the Waldorf-Astoria, warmly receiving everyone on the street who recognized him as he stood patiently waiting. He made headlines recently for other things, but this is what should be the headline: a lesson in being present, in noticing, in taking the time.